CYBERSPACE OFFERS NEW TURF FOR GANGS

Police Are Mining Internet Sites For Information On Local Groups
Taking Their Message Online

With a few clicks on his laptop, Naperville Detective Rich Wistocki
is staring at a St. Charles man who appears to be smoking marijuana.

He clicks again, and there's another picture of the 22-year-old,
nearly hidden under a large pile of what looks to be bags of marijuana leaves.

"Look at this. How stupid is this?" Wistocki says as he prints out
the photo and saves a "screen grab" to his computer. "These guys put
this out there, thinking that nobody's watching. That it's only their
friends, but they are wrong."

Wistocki, who works in his department's Internet crimes unit, has
seen hundreds of photographs like these: Guys pointing guns, spraying
graffiti, flashing gang signs or handfuls of money. Law enforcement
officials say it's all part of the growing trend of gangs pushing
thug life on the Internet.

A search for gang sites will turn up links to anti-gang sites started
by law enforcement or anti-crime organizations. Other sites claim to
be academic, presenting the real story behind Chicago's gangs.

The more you click, however, the more likely the site you enter
belongs to someone purporting to be a gang member. And it's likely a
police officer is looking at it too.

West Chicago Police Cmdr. Bruce Malkin teaches about gangs around the
country and surfs the Internet searching for gang sites almost daily.
He keeps a cache of Web sites, though he discourages the public from
visiting them. He thinks some gangs use devices called "cookies" on
their sites to track down site visitors' personal information.
(Malkin and other officers use Internet addresses that bounce
trackers to bogus names.)

Malkin, like several of the detectives interviewed, said most of what
he finds he uses to educate himself about gangs in his area.

Although a lot of the chatter is cryptic, Malkin said that with close
monitoring and gang know-how, police can learn a lot.

"You'd be surprised the amount of information they'll put out on the
Web," Malkin said.

On a recent foray, Malkin entered a site dedicated to the 18th Street
Gang, a California group that claims to have members in several
Illinois towns, including West Chicago.

Midway down the page, the site declares that its pictures and links
are copyrighted. It features a warning to law enforcement not to
click onto linked pages, complete with the picture of a pig in a
large red circle with a slash through it.

The warning makes Malkin chuckle.

"Oh, yeah, like that's going to stop me from looking," he says as he
continues clicking.

Many of the gang sites, like this one, have pictures of alleged gang
members, some covering their faces with bandanas or sunglasses and
flashing gang signs or guns. Some sites detail a gang's history and
boundaries and feature pictures of graffiti with which members have
tagged their turf. The sites honor dead gang members with guest books
and music and vow vengeance against the killers. Many also feature
chat rooms and bulletin boards--some password protected, others
not--where postings range from favorite albums to vulgarity-laden
proclamations of gang dominance or rival gang bashing, known as "netbanging."

One site features a "shout out" to the Latin Kings and reminds
members that they have to keep the gang's "manifesto" and
"constitution" in their minds.

So why are the sites out there? Some police officers say they think
the sites are created just to glorify their creators. Others say the
sites could be used to advertise drug dealing or to send messages to
other gang members. Some think it's a modern-day form of recruitment,
akin to spraying graffiti around a neighborhood.

"It's advertising, basically," said Aurora Police Cmdr. Mike
Langston, who has been investigating gangs with the department for
the last 20 years. He first noticed the gang sites a few years ago.
"The more they can make that life exciting and enticing to somebody,
the more likely they are to get people to want to be a part of it."

Mike Scott, who asked to be identified by the pen name he used to
write a book on gang life called "Lords of Lawndale," co-founded a
Web site dedicated to the now-defunct Chicago gang, the Gaylords.

A member during the 1980s and '90s now living in Elmhurst, Scott
started the Web site to publish his perspective on a way of life that
he says youths turn to, not by choice, but to protect their
neighborhoods and themselves. The site also gives former gang members
a place to talk about their lives and their pasts.

"I guess it's a survivors' Web site. The guys who didn't wind up in
prison or who are not dead, they're coming forward and talking now,"
he said. "It's not just therapy for me. It's therapy for a lot of people."

Although his site claims not to promote gangs, Scott said he gets
e-mail from teens asking for advice on how they can start their own
gangs. He doesn't encourage them.

"I don't want to bring any young kids into it," he said. "Every
Gaylord who's around my age, we all have children now. We wouldn't
bring them in, so why would you want to bring someone else in?"

Police admit that, by itself, material gleaned from the sites is of
limited value. Although many departments said they monitor the sites
for information, they can't rely on them for evidence, Malkin said.

"If I get a name from our gang officers, I'll go online and see what
I can find out," said Wistocki, who works closely with Naperville's
gangs unit. "But you're not going to get a case just off the
Internet. This just helps us to maybe link some people to other
people, get information about who they hang with, where they go."

Langston said Internet gang chatter has helped his officers figure
out potential hotspots. If an investigator sees a post about a rift
between gangs, police will keep an eye out for problems on the street, he said.

Some officers say they have started creating fake profiles on the
sites, going undercover online in an attempt to get more details
about the gangs' activities.

All of the detectives interviewed, however, declined to give detailed
information about their tactics, saying they know that gang members
are watching their moves too.

Still, some investigators think many of the sites and many posters
could just be posers.

Chicago police say the gang members they're after aren't posting
photographs of themselves on the Web.

"The leaders, the movers and shakers, they're certainly not sitting
at home behind a computer," said Cmdr. David Sobczyk of the Chicago
Police Department Deployment Center. "These are people who are in it
for the money. They're beyond some sort of virtual spray-painting."